2013-11-22
Explanation
The Joke
This comic is a science fiction parable about the end of humanity. It follows a progression: as society became more automated, it took less and less real-world labor to earn each hour of virtual reality. Machines became so efficient that it was cheaper to double the subjective perception of time than to double real-world productivity. Eventually, technology provided the sensation of infinite time in virtual paradise. At that point, the choice was simple -- why spend a short life in the real world of sadness and absurdity when you could live forever in paradise?
A monument is inscribed: "Dear Traveler: Please don't think ill of us. We are the last generation." The final panel reveals a lone alien (or distant-future traveler) reading the monument on an otherwise abandoned Earth. The last line reads: "And we are immortal."
The Humor
This comic is more philosophical than comedic, which is common for SMBC's longer-form strips. The dark irony is that humanity achieved immortality -- but only by retreating permanently into virtual reality and abandoning the physical world entirely. They are "immortal" in their subjective experience, but from the outside, they are essentially extinct. The monument is both a proud declaration and a tombstone for the human species. The traveler finds not a thriving civilization but an empty planet with a note explaining why nobody is home.
The deeper joke is the logical inevitability of the scenario: if virtual paradise becomes cheap enough, the rational choice really is to never leave. Humanity didn't destroy itself through war or environmental collapse -- it simply optimized itself out of existence.